The Football Phenomena

Buenos Aires Travel Blog

Excitement at the beginning of the match brings some fans to climb to the fence topped with barbed wire

I love football (soccer) when abroad. Last weekend we attended a Boca
Juniors football match where the team won their second championship of
the year, and it was wild. The noise was incredible, but even more
incredible was the #12, the cheering section. They lead the whole
stadium in Boca songs, of which their are seemingly thousands! For the
entire game hardly a minute passed without the bass drums beating,
hands systematically striking the ticker tape filled air, and voices
filling the stadium in triumphant song. Even when players are injured
and being carted off the field the crowd sang, chanted, and
participated in this exotic ritual of maddness that only football can
bring about.

Equally impressive as the rhythmic crowd were the vendors who, despite
age, managed to weave their way through the seated (or standing) crowds
and sell their peanuts, popcorn, hotdogs, and coca cola.

Here I am before the game starts.

They walked on
the backs of the seats and seemed to float among the fans.

The match was incredible, and I am thrilled to have gone, not just for
the experience of participating in a world wide phenomena, but also
because of the understanding the game gave me. Football is anesthetic
for the masses. As in the 1978 World Cup in the midst of the dirty war
in Argentina the tortured and torturers alike paused from their
immediate concerns and rejoiced at Argentina's victory. The game also
gave me a sense of the sacred nature of football and football stadiums
and I understand the injustice that was holding prisoners in football
stadiums in Santiago during the Pinochet junta.